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Literary Review
WRITING IS A MARATHON
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
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Timeri Murari’s oeuvre straddles fiction and non-fiction, screenplays and stage plays.
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Photo: S. Subramanium
Prolific: Timeri Murari.
Timeri N. Murari’s sizeable oeuvre of creative writing almost always straddles history and relationships. If history takes Murari’s readers to the corridors of past, the layers of relationships introduce them to the creases of the present. The Small House, the journalist-turned-author’s latest novel, is a predictable work in this context. “Yes, it is as much about history as about relationships,” agrees Chennai-based Murari.
But Murari’s book soon swerves from predictability as he draws the distinctiveness of the complex characters and their relationships vis-À-vis others with history providing necessary support.
“No, I don’t stay in a small house.” A wide grin from the former The Guardian reporter brushes aside any chance of autobiographical elements, a facet found in his other works. By ‘small house’, he means chinna veedu, a Tamil term that means housing one’s mistress.
Emotional journeys
Based in Madras, Murari’s second novel also has the city as the backdrop after The Arrangements of Love. “The Small House,” says the author, “is about four characters, Roopmati and Khris, and Tazneem and Hari and their emotional journey.”
While Tazneem deals with an inter-religion marriage and a possibly gay husband; her friend Roopmati, an accomplished historian and sole-surviving heir of the once renowned Krishnarangam royal family, suffers for not being able to love after betrayal. What brings the two women together is their discovery that their husbands have been cheating on them. What sets them apart is the way they react to it.
“While Tazneem wants to do everything to save her marriage, Roopmati longs to be her husband’s mistress and live in the chinna veedu. Because a wife’s life may not always be a happy one, that of a mistress is often filled with love.”
The parallels where reality and fiction meet in Murari’s pages are interesting. “Roopmati had lied about her past and had rewritten it, the way our history often gets rewritten with the change of political party at the Centre,” he says. Whether one can escape memory by looking the other side is a subject that stretches the span of his story. Murari underlines that he has tried not to be judgemental. “After a point you end up being just a narrator.”
Having settled down in Chennai with his Australian wife Maureen, Murari is now a former journalist and a fulltime writer. Not just novels, he has a list of non-fiction, screen plays and stage plays too, some of which have received rave reviews. A prolific writer, he has just finished a memoir, Limping to the Centre of the World, to be published by Penguin India later this year. “I went on a trek to Mount Kailash last April. Four weeks before the journey, I injured by leg and still went ahead with the plan, and that is why the title has the word, limping,” he says, laughing. Also, he has just wrapped up a screenplay of his Taj: A Story of Mughal India for a Canadian producer. Then, he is “working on a new work of fiction set in India”. “The story will look at our politicians and their power but will not be boring,” he assures. It will look at life in India 20 years from now and how today’s political decisions affect the future.
Straddling genres
“Writing is a marathon, you have to keep writing,” he says in case you wonder at the pace of his pen. About straddling genres, he jokes how a senior editor at The Guardian once told him, “You better make up your mind.” Murari then adds, “It is like pushing the envelope. Once you get surer of your talent, you try newer things. I don’t have a Harry Potter to go on and on.” But then he admits, “By learning to structure a stage play, where dialogues are the key to the characters, I learnt a lot about writing fiction.” Screenplays though are a different ballgame. “You have to always keep the camera in mind. I was lucky to have learnt how to do it from some experts,” he states.
Murari wrote the screenplay for Amol Palekar’s “Daayra”. Palekar changed the ending, which still peeves Murari. Though he is not quite opposed to doing a screenplay for a Bollywood production, he adds quite sharply, “It is full of serpents.” And he has not yet cracked how ‘serpents’ keep their relationships going.
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